The Game Is Onnnnyawnnn

This is a quick post to fol­low up on the NBC soc­cer chan­nel news. I spent the past 24 hours pretty much watch­ing this chan­nel. And I have three real thoughts:

– I thought I had got­ten Marcelo Bal­boa out of my life, but nooooo. He just had to be on the U.S.-Japan match, didn’t he? Well, At least he had JP Del­la­ca­mara to make him sound less like a dolt.

– The qual­ity of play is decent, but a con­sid­er­ably lower level than the Euro 2008, and the pitches so far are less than stel­lar. No won­der Brazil couldn’t move the ball against Bel­gium. They played on the same grass as in my back yard!

– Soc­cer really needs to be in HD all the time. Every match looks amaz­ing. On the down side, it exposes how bad the fields look when they shoot close-up. Also, it’s painfully obvi­ous that the sec­ondary match announc­ers are in New York and not China, as they often miss names and plays because it’s obvi­ous they only have two or three mon­i­tors to look at. Also, they seem to imply that they ARE in China, but I know that’s not the case. Let’s hope this gets beter quick.

The pre­lims are always a bit bor­ing, but I was glad to see this chan­nel play­ing matches all day. In pre­vi­ous Games, there’s no way I would have got­ten the Argentina match or the Italy flop-fest vic­tory. So a Bronze medal to NBC for this chan­nel, and if the announc­ing and matches improve, they have a shot at a gold!